The council meeting that followed was the largest Wren had yet witnessed, senior pack members filling the room to capacity, and she made a point of arriving early enough to claim a seat at the table itself rather than the periphery, a small, deliberate statement of intent she suspected wouldn't go unnoticed.
It didn't. Marcus glanced her way as he laid out the security assessment, something approving in his expression, and Callum, standing at the head of the table, gave her a brief nod that felt less like permission and more like acknowledgment, exactly the partnership she'd been asking him for since the earliest weeks of their arrangement.
"The ceremony needs to happen on our terms, not theirs," Marcus was saying, gesturing to a map of pack territory spread across the table. "Which mean
